Aurender and Qobuz stateside

[PHC1]

Originally Posted by Antonmb

It’s a generalization, but Tidal has a deeper catalog of American rock and popular music, while Qobuz excels at classical and jazz. As Bart says, for about the same price as Tidal, you get 16/44 cd quality flac streaming plus a serious discount on hi-res download purchases. For the higher price of Sublime+ you also get streaming of all hi res titles, and still get the discounts on downloads.

If you buy music for download, the discounts are a major benefit and can pretty much offset the cost of the annual subscription. Just as an example, prices for new hi res releases are often 20-30% less than Hdtracks.

American Rock is virtually unlistenable anymore with the loudness and dynamic range compression they call "remasters". Can't remember the last time I came across any of the newer albums I grew up with from the Rock genre that sounds listenable on anything but an iPhone or a small Sonos speaker. A quick look at the Dynamic Range database paints a very grim picture. So that leaves me with Jazz and Blues of which fortunately there are many more enjoyable albums. The high resolution downloads of more recent recordings and boutique studio material is great quality but do not necessarily offer satisfying music content in itself.

I wonder if Europe went through the similar dynamic range compression and loudness wars music destruction in the last few decades?